Regional News

Tatyana M. Thompson, column editor

Hawaii

The paper lab at the Pacific Regional Conservation Center has
been busy with visiting conservators. Debra Evans (honorary
member of PRCC and winner of the "most visits" award) spent ten
days working in the lab in March. Janet English is working in the
paper lab for 1-1/2 months. Janet is visiting from Oberlin, Ohio,
and will be working on a wide diversity of objects: fine art
drawings, an ancient Japanese document and a Spanish manuscript
from Guam. Downey Manoukian is being kept busy with upcoming
exhibitions at the Honolulu Academy of Arts.

The objects lab at the Pacific Regional Conservation
Center has been devoting a considerable amount of time to the
planning and preparation for the move of the Bishop Museum's
Anthropology collections into the new Castle Building on the Bishop
Museum grounds. The NEH and NSF funded move will take place over the
next three years and will involved compactorized storage of
approximately 130,000 artifacts from Hawaii and the Pacific. Much of
the labor for preparation of the artifacts and for actually
transporting them will be provided by a team of 14 PRCC trained
Collection Management Assistant volunteers.

Larry Pace will be presenting two public lectures at the
Bishop Museum on the history of the oil painting technique and the
conservation challenges posed by variations on the technique through
history.

The objects and paper labs have been participating in
conservation surveys around the state. To date, PRCC has carried out
detailed condition surveys for 18 institutions in the state of
Hawaii with four additional surveys to be completed by the end of
1991. The recently completed survey for Hamilton Library at the
University of Hawaii was a particularly challenging one as it
addressed long-standing mold and insect problems which affect a
large percentage of the library's two million volumes.

As of June, 1990, Suzanne Deal Booth has left her
position as Training Coordinator at the Getty Conservation Institute
to become a private conservation consultant. Projects include the
coordination/compilation of materials for Recent Lining
Methods and Related Processes, a collaboration between the
Royal Danish Academy and the Getty Conservation Institute.

Frank Lambert, Professor Emeritus in Chemistry, Occidental
College, has worked closely with the J. Paul Getty Museum and the
Getty Conservation Institute over the past 8 years. Dr. Lambert will
be pursuing other interests and will no longer be available for
continuous consultation. His contributions to scientific research in
the field of conservation have been greatly appreciated by those who
have worked with him.

Sharon Blank's first six months at the Natural History
Museum of Los Angeles County have been extremely busy, writing three
grants and preparing for what is probably the biggest IMS
conservation survey ever done (main museum, 2 satellite museums and
8 warehouses). She is officially in the History Division (yes,
Barbie dolls, rubber raincoats, etc.) but has been given the
responsibility of developing a conservation program for the entire
museum.

The Natural History Museum of LA County was awarded a
Conservation Project Grant from IMS. The survey team consists of
Catherine Hawks (Team Coordinator), Victoria
Blyth-Hill, Gerald Fitzgerald, Carl Patterson,
Robert Waller and Steven Weintraub. They are working
with in house conservator Sharon Blank and registrars
Lella Smith and Maren Jones. The team spent one week
in February burrowing into the collections and archives and are now
in the process of evaluating their notes and making
recommendations.

Victoria Blyth-Hill, Suzanne Deal Booth, Denise
Domergue and Rosa Lowinger participated in a seminar on
conservation organized by Sotheby's Los Angeles office. It was part
of a series of 8 seminars called "The Informed Collector."

Lana McCaffrey is moving to Los Angeles in mid-May to be
with her husband, who will be working there. Leaving her position as
Textile Conservation Assistant at the North Carolina Museum of
History, Lana looks forward to becoming active in the conservation
community in the LA area.

Neil Rhodes and Shelley Svoboda, of the LACMA
Conservation Center, have announced that they will be married on
July 6, 1991.

Tatyana M. Thompson presented a lecture in February at the
Armand Hammer Museum and Cultural Center on the care of paintings
for curators and collectors.

As part of an ongoing series for museum studies graduate
students, Tatyana M. Thompson, Mary Hough and Aneta
Zebala have presented lectures on the conservation and care of
paintings for the University of Southern California and California
State University, Long Beach.

Rosa Lowinger of Sculpture Conservation Studio in Santa
Monica announces that Hiroko Kariya has joined her staff as a
pre-program intern. Hiroko has just completed her BA in art history
from SUNY-Buffalo. When she isn't supervising her new intern, Rosa
is receiving excellent reviews for the off-Broadway play that she
authored. Entitled "The Encanto File," it played at the Judith
Anderson Theater at 42nd and 9th Avenue through 19 April 1991.
Although the story is not about conservation, Rosa says that her
next one will be.

Robert Aitchison and Mark Watters once again are
doing business as Aitchison and Watters, Inc. and are celebrating
their 1-year anniversary in their new location, 740 N. La Brea
Avenue, Los Angeles. Monica Townsend, Mary Holmes and
Lisa Forman are continuing to assist Mark and Robert in the
studio and office.

Tatyana Thompson is coordinating a collaborative effort
with Mark Watters, Glenn Wharton and Sharon
Shore on a conservation treatment proposal for three
Rauschenberg paintings at MOCA.

In February, Denise Domergue, Carolyn Tallent,
Joseph Hammer and Pamela Gonzales of Conservation of
Paintings, Ltd., Santa Monica, conducted a seminar on the
conservation of contemporary art and a tour of their studio for the
members of the Art and the Law Committee, an interest group of the
California Bar Association. In addition, Carolyn spent a three-week
working visit in Ohio, where she divided her time between the
Intermuseum Conservation Laboratory in Oberlin and Yoder
Conservation in Cleveland.

After 5 years at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art,
Marcelle Andreasson, Associate Conservator of Paintings, has
decided to return to Europe. She came to the US in 1985 as an intern
at the J. Paul Getty Museum, after which she took her position at
LACMA.

Lone Bogh, a paintings conservator from the Royal Museum
of Art in Copenhagen, has just finished a 6-week stay at LACMA as
part of an exchange program known as International Partnerships
Among Museums, directed by AAM and ICOM.
During her visit, Lone took part in the conservation of a 19th
century Danish painting by Kobke and demonstrated traditional Danish
restoration techniques.

As part of her IMS Fellowship in Conservation to survey and
research Tibetan thangkas at LACMA, Susan Sayre Batton
recently spent a week studying Himalayan painting collections on the
East Coast. The highlight of the trip was visiting the Newark
Museum's distinguished Tibetan collection, founded in 1911.

In March, Joanne Page participated in a panel presentation
entitled "Toward a California Preservation Program". The California
State Library organized the conference, which was one of four being
held in different locations in the state, to develop a statewide
plan to meet the preservation and conservation needs of California's
libraries and archives. Joanne discussed the conservator's role in
preservation, and networking among conservators.

Pieter Meyers has just returned from a working vacation in
Japan, where he visited the cities of Tokyo, Kyoto and Nara. During
his stay, Pieter gave lectures at the Ancient Orient Museum Tokyo;
participated in a discussion of collaboration on lead isotope ratio
studies at the Tokyo National Research Institute of Cultural
Properties; and examined Sasanian silver objects both in museums and
private collections.

Meredith Montague has just spent 10 weeks observing
techniques and exchanging information with the textile conservators
at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Meredith is currently
working in LACMA's textile conservation lab as an intern from the
art conservation program at Buffalo State College.

Catherine McLean has returned to work after a 10-week
maternity leave to care for her new daughter, Sylvana Elektra
McLean.

Elizabeth Lunning has been appointed the Conservator
of Works of Art on Paper at the Menil Collection in Houston.
Elizabeth come to the Menil from her previous position of Associate
Conservator in the Prints, Drawings, and Photographs Department at
the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

Jan Sobato has been appointed founding director of the
Bridwell Book Conservation Laboratory at Southern Methodist
University in Dallas.

The Houston Museum of Fine Arts has begun a collection survey
funded by grants from the IMS and NEA, which is scheduled to be
completed in the fall of 1991. Wynne Phelan is the project
coordinator and paper conservator for the survey. Other conservators
participating in the project include: Joe Fronek (paintings),
Greg Landrey (furniture), Andrew Lins (decorative
arts), Bettina Raphael (ethnographic objects), Jack
Soultanian (sculpture), and Phoebe Dent Weil (outdoor
sculpture). The Houston Museum of Fine Arts has also recently
purchased an off-site building which will be used for conservation
facilities.

The Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth will have an environmental
survey done this spring by Steven Weintraub.

The Southwest Association for Conservation (SWAC) has been
formally dissolved, and its bank balance donated to FAIC.

Barbara Brown and Holly Krueger attended the AIC Photographic Materials Group's winter
meeting in Ottawa, Canada, where it was decided that the group's
1993 winter meeting will be held in Austin, Texas.

In January, Jack Soultanian was a visiting conservator at
the Archer M. Huntington Art Gallery at the University of Texas in
Austin. While in Austin, he treated a sculpture that is on loan to
the gallery from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and gave
two public lectures.

Cheryl Carrabba and Sally Shelton gave
presentations at the "Introduction to Museum Conservation" workshop
in San Antonio in February. Marilyn Lenz and Anne
Zanikos also participated in a roundtable discussion at the
workshop.

In March, a team of specialists which included Tamsen
Fuller (conservator in private practice, Philadelphia), Paul
Marcon (Canadian Conservation Institute), John Simmons
(University of Kansas), and Robert Waller (Canadian Museum of
Nature) visited the Texas Memorial Museum in Austin as part of the
conservation survey project being conducted by the museum.

March 11th-15th, JoAnne Martinez, book conservator at New
York Public Library, worked at Booklab, Inc., in Austin.

During April, Eleanore Stewart, book conservator at
Stanford University, and Mindell Dubansky, book conservator
at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, were visiting conservators in the
Conservation Dept. at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at
the U. of Texas. While in Austin, Ms. Dubansky also spent a week
working at Booklab, Inc.

On April 12, Mark van Gelder gave a presentation at the
annual meeting of the Texas Association of Museums in Corpus
Christi.

Fred Wallace, paintings intern at the Balboa Art Cons.
Center (BACC), attended the Gerry Headley Memorial Forum on the
cleaning of paintings, hosted by the Queens conservation program in
Kingston, Ontario.

Janos Novak, conservation technician at BACC, and his wife
Jennifer have a new son, Zoltan Alexander, born January 4, 1991.

Lauren Voparil has joined the staff at BACC. She is
working as a pre-program staff assistant in the Paper Conservation
Department.

Carol Satersmoen, Registrar of the Colorado Historical
Society, Denver, will be conducting a training session this spring
for the state's regional property managers in the use of
environmental monitoring kits. The kits were purchased through an
IMS grant for each of CHS's eight regional properties.

Connie Wanke, Colorado Conservation Center, has moved her
studio to a new address. She may be reached at 2074 South Adams,
Denver, CO 80210.

Rocky Mountain Regional Conservation Center announces the
addition of two new pre-program aides: Diane Tafilowski from
Wayne State University, and Rebecca McDowell from the
University of Colorado. Gina Laurin, RMRCC Objects
Conservator, has been accepted by AIC to do
a poster session at the annual meeting in Albuquerque this May
entitled "Arsenic and Dead Bugs: Conservation Peculiarities in the
American West." Gina will attend a two-week course at the Getty
Conservation Institute this May entitled "Preventative Conservation:
Museum Collections and Their Environment." Randy Ash, RMRCC
Paintings Conservator, will be going to Venezuela on a State
Department visiting scholar grant at the end of April for two weeks
of teaching conservation in Caracas and Maricabo.

Kay Karol Horse Capture has established Ghost Pines
Conservation, P. 0. Box 1041, Hays, MT 59527. It is a private
practice specializing in ethnographic and Plains Indian art. At the
April meeting of Recursos de Santa Fe, Kay Karol will be presenting
a session for collectors and dealers of art of the Plains Indians
entitled "Conservation and Ethics."

Denver Institute for Art Conservation will host the Conservation Information Network
Training Seminar to be given by the J. Paul Getty Institute. The
course will be held at the facilities of Western Center for the
Conservation of Fine Arts on May 24 and 25 following the AAM meeting
in Denver. DIAC is a newly-formed non-profit organization supporting
research and education in art conservation.

Western Center for the Conservation of Fine Arts is pleased to
announce the addition of Camilla Van Vooren to its staff.
Camilla will begin work as Assistant Paintings Conservator at WCCFA
in October after completing her internship at the J. Paul Getty
Museum.

During March, WCCFA paintings conservators Carmen F. Bria,
Jr. and David Bauer treated the Allen True murals at the
Colorado State Capitol. Carmen F. Bria, Jr. conducted an
annual survey of collections at the Wildlife of the American West
Art Museum, Jackson, Wyoming in February. Robert McCarroll,
WCCFA Chief Paper Conservator, is treating the 1870 architectural
drawings of the New State House, Carson, Nevada. The seven large
drawings by architect Joseph Gosling, are property of the Nevada
State Museum.

Carl Patterson has conducted eight CAP surveys this winter
through out the states. He will participate in a panel assessing the
first year of the Conservation Assessment Program to be held in
Washington, D.C., this spring. In November, Patterson completed a
course offered by the Smithsonian Institute on testing display and
storage materials for museums. He has given a lecture entitled "The
Chemistry of Materials Found in Natural History Collections" at the
University of Colorado. The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles
County hosted Patterson at their Lunchtime Lecture Series in March
to present a paper on materials for installation and storage.
Patterson also presented "Living with Collections in the Home" at
the Curators' Lunchtime Series of the Denver Museum of Natural
History in March.

Ongoing work at the Oakland Museum Conservation Center
includes finishing an IMS grant for the upgrading of paintings
storage, identification of photographs and earthquake mitigation.
Julie Goldman and Alida Francis, registrar at the
Mexican Museum, are currently working on quake mitigation in the
History Department object storage areas.

The Oakland Museum recently submitted their third IMS
grant which is designed to address pest control management. If
awarded, they will be improving conditions at their collections
storage facility and purchasing a mini fumigation bubble for use
with carbon dioxide.

The Oakland Museum Conservation Center and the object lab
at the Fine Art Museum of San Francisco are working together
on an NEA grant to analyze and treat part of the museum's Arthur and
Lucia Mathews Collection. This collection, which includes polychrome
objects, furniture and frames, is being prepared for a traveling
exhibition.

Debra and Brad Evans are now parents to Juliet Rose Evans
as of January 6, 1991. Debra will be back to work at the lab in
early April. Debra says, "It is the most beautiful baby in the whole
world."

Ongoing work at WRPCL includes the second year of a two-year IMS
grant to survey and treat many of the Achenbach's master
drawings.

Theresa Andrews, WRPCL's Buffalo State College
Conservation intern, beginning in October 1990, will be studying
under Debbie Hess Norris in the Winterthur Museum/ University of
Delaware's spring Photo Block.

Julie Goldman has returned to the lab following a
three-month stay in Tokyo, Japan working in the studio of Mari
Yamaryo treating 18th and 19th century Japanese prints and a project
at LACMA, treating the Yoshitoshi prints for the Japanese Pavilion's
spring rotation.

The Asian Art Museum's November 17, 1989, earthquake
insurance claim has been settled, so work on the 22 damaged artworks
has begun. Glenn Wharton and John Griswold will be working on seven
large sculptures. Linda Scheifler will repair the 15 smaller
objects. This project is scheduled to continue until mid 1991.

Faith Bilyeu was on leave from the museum during February
and March during which time Lee Ann Daffner worked as
Conservation Technician contributing the much needed support for the
successful installation of the Tibet Exhibition: "Wisdom and
Compassion."

Helen Alten, Conservator of the Alaska State Museum,
will be supervising installation of the Russian-America Exhibition
to open this spring in Juneau. Helen will be instructing volunteers
in condition survey methods for the 805 loaned objects. Mary-Lou
Florian of the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria will
co-teach with Helen a workshop on basket conservation and
preservation to be held in Sitka, Alaska March 18-20.

Tamsen Fuller announces the opening of a private practice
in object conservation in Corvallis, Oregon, specializing in the
conservation of ethnographic, archaeological, and natural science
collections. For an interim period Tamsen will also continue her
long-established conservation practice in Lansdowne, Pennsylvania.
Her new address in Corvallis: 325 Southeast Alexander, Corvallis, OR
97333; 503-752-1475.

Peter Malarkey has established a private painting
conservation practice in Seattle. In addition to the treatment of
easel paintings, Peter will be engaged in mural painting treatments
in late 1991 and 1992. Peter's address: 119 Northwest 75th, Seattle,
WA 98117 206-784-6426.

Sonja Sopher, Paintings Conservator at the Oregon Art
Institute, is engaged in the treatment of 5 paintings for the new
Seattle Art Museum building. Paper Conservator Elisabeth
Chambers is completing a survey of 20,000 prints in the Oregon
Art Institute collection.

Jonathan Taggart announces the establishment of his
sculpture and object conservation practice on the northwest coast of
Oregon. He has worked for the past three years out of Connecticut
and New York City. Taggart lived in the Pacific Northwest for a
decade before entering the University of Delaware-Winterthur
Conservation Program. He specializes in onsite treatments of
objects, particularly bronze, stone and modern sculpture, as well as
in conservation assessments. Taggart Objects Conservation: P. 0. Box
2309, 607 Pacific Way, Gearhart OR 97138-2309; 503/738-0810.

As of January 1991, painting conservator, Karin Knight
has moved to Santa Fe from New York to join the staff of Steven
Prins & Company.

Nancy Odegaard will be looking for a post-graduate fellow
to work with her at the Arizona State Museum to fill a one-year
fellowship in ethnographic art conservation, funded by the Getty
Grant Program.

In May, Martha Little will be repeating the advanced
conservation workshop she taught on 19th century cloth bindings at
the University of Iowa's Center for the Book.

Landis Smith, of Santa Fe, gave birth to a beautiful baby
girl, Isabel, on December 26. Mother and baby are well and enjoying
some months at home.

In 1990, from July 15 to October 15, a group of seven museum
professionals from Central American countries--conservators and
registrars-- received fellowships under Fulbright/Smithsonian/ Banco
Central de Costa Rica funding to learn about conservation and
collections care in North American museums. The group spent 2 weeks
at the Smithsonian Institution, 9 weeks at different US museums, and
one final week at a wrap-up session at the Smithsonian Institution.
Four of the Fulbright fellows spent their 9 weeks in the western
United States: Mr. Raul Jimenez from Costa Rica and Mr.
Rafael Rivera from Panama at the Rocky Mountain Regional
Conservation Center; Ms. Myriam Davila from Nicaragua at the
Center for Central American Art & Archaeology in Boulder,
Colorado; and Ms. Lucrecia Rojas at the Fine Arts Museums in
San Francisco Objects Conservation Lab. We have encouraged the
Fulbright fellows to keep us updated about conservation activities
in their countries via the WAAC Newsletter.

Mr. Manuel Lopez from the National Museum in San Salvador
has written that Mrs. Leticia Vasquez, Conservator of
Paintings, is coordinating conservation work at the National Palace
of the City of San Salvador, a national monument with 104 rooms. The
work includes restoration of murals, period rooms, paintings and
decorative objects such as stone, glass and iron furnishings. Seven
paintings (portraits of past presidents of El Salvador) are being
conserved. The intended use of the National Palace will be as
Metropolitan Museum for the City of San Salvador.